Rebuilding Connections

Mirko Baselgia, Olaf Breuning, Natacha Donzé, Uriel Orlow, Delphine Reist, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Anouk Tschanz

Exhibition: June 11 - September 30, 2022

Vernissage: Friday, June 10, 6 to 9 p.m.

We are pleased to present the new exhibition "Rebuilding Connections". The group show includes newly commissioned works by Mirko Baselgia, Olaf Breuning, Natacha Donzé, Uriel Orlow, Delphine Reist, Sergio Rojas Chaves and Anouk Tschanz. Artistic practice around the Anthropocene has become increasingly topical in recent years, not only because awareness of acute environmental problems has been heightened, but also because people can only shape their future by incorporating ecological perspectives into everyday life. The exhibition title "Rebuilding Connections" illustrates the webs of relationships that the new works create between everyday objects and human perception. In doing so, the works subtly approach the themes of coexistence, sensory impressions, and different ways of looking between macro and micro perspectives - in which the artists invite us to sharpen our focus, deconstruct, and question common perspectives.

Mirko Baselgia's four new works show patches of shaggy ink cap dye, a mass created in the process of autolysis of the fungus, against different gridded backgrounds. The reference to Wittgenstein's early pictorial theory of language illustrates perception as a complex phenomenon that not only varies from person to person, but also depends on the grid one uses. The five woodcuts by Olaf Breuning, consist of color-intensive landscapes in which only the human figure seems to threaten harmony; yet the pictorial elements in all five works are recurrent - an imposing, printmaking game with colors and planes. Natacha Donzé deconstructs fragments of a weather map into a luminous, flocked silkscreen that evokes associations with severe weather catastrophes, yet unfolds a pleasant mood alongside an eerie one.

Two works that are part of Uriel Orlow's "Tree School" series consist of a wood print on Japanese paper with microscopic images of wood fibers from the Daniellia oliveri tree, juxtaposed with a silkscreen of the tree on a wooden panel - addressing not only the aesthetic, but also the political and historical dimensions of timber trade. Delphine Reist, known for her object-oriented practice, presents the snow chain as a photogram in numerous unique baryte prints, challenging our perception by suddenly turning the banal everyday object into a polysemy of different interpretations such as basketball hoop or dream catcher. Sergio Rojas Chaves zooms in close on the human relationship to the pet in his four lithographs, in which the proximity between the parrot's beak and the human's lips is both beautiful and strange - aptly illustrating our ambivalent relationship to the animal.

With four small black-and-white baryte prints Anouk Tschanz stages the snowdrop as a sculptural entity, revealing the mysterious character of natural objects with its detailed richness of form.

This exhibition allows to explore different positions on the themes of nature and culture with a focus on artisanal production techniques of printmaking. Therefore, we are very pleased to feature all four processes of printmaking with woodcuts, lithographs, silkscreens, and intaglio prints and that we can additionally display various baryte prints. We hope that the individual works in this exhibition will stimulate further reflection on the subject areas and inspire new ways of looking at things.

For more information or images, please contact David Khalat at info(at)vfo.ch.